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For years, Hollywood has been attempting to adapt the stories of our most beloved video games into big-budget movies and television shows, but their track record has been less than ideal. For every smart and successful adaptation like The Last of Us, other popular games have received the short end of the stick. Look no further than shows like Halo, produced by Paramount Plus, to see just how low video game adaptations are willing to stoop.
Thankfully, Amazon Prime Video paid respect to both the source material and their adaptation when they released Fallout: Season 1, based on the long-running role-playing game franchise. Instead of a direct re-telling of the existing story, the Fallout TV show offers a wholly original tale, but one that’s firmly set within the existing game world. Set in a post-apocalyptic United States, the show is packed with various characters and factions, all fighting for survival in this unforgiving world. While the show does a decent job of explaining all the important bits, there are decades of lore left unspoken, revealing deeper truths about the events of the show and large implications for future seasons. Today, we’re taking a closer look at Fallout: Season 1 as we break down the story, characters, and lore, all fact-checked against the original game franchise narrative. So, let’s start where every Fallout story starts, with a nuclear apocalypse at the world’s doorstep.
The Bomb and What Came After
Fallout: Season 1 begins in the year 2077, with one of our main characters, Cooper Howard, working at a kid’s birthday party as an entertainer, with some help from his young daughter, Janey. Once a popular Hollywood actor, Cooper struggles to find work, especially due to the imposing threat of nuclear war. Due to long-standing tensions between world powers, it seems like nuclear war is all but guaranteed, with many citizens owning private fallout bunkers, should the worst come to pass. Unfortunately for Cooper and the rest of the party, the worst comes to pass as nukes reign down from the sky, leaving the world in a state of nuclear winter.
Up until the Fallout television show, the question of “who dropped the bombs” was always highly contested among fans. Fingers could be pointed in any direction, but there was never enough concrete evidence to properly identify the true culprit. Towards the end of season 1, the show drops one of the biggest narrative bombs of the entire canon. The show reveals that the all-powerful American company Vault-Tec, best known for creating hundreds of giant fallout shelters called “Vaults,” was responsible for the nukes dropped on US soil. This truly evil plan was not executed for political or religious gain but rather for personal success, as Vault-Tec stood to gain massive profit if nuclear war were to erupt.
To make things even worse, the Vaults, meant to be safe havens from the apocalypse, are secretly designed as test chambers and sold off to the highest bidder for whatever sick or unethical desire they have. Worst of all, this decision was made by the Vault-Tec executive, Barb Howard, Cooper’s estranged wife. With the world under siege and hundreds of years of radiation left on the surface to rot the Earth, living in the Vaults is arguably preferable to surviving on the surface, but the worst is yet to come.
The Nuclear Future
The remainder of Fallout: Season 1 takes place in 2296, a whopping 219 years after the bombs have dropped. Treated as canon in the grander Fallout narrative, the show is set further in the timeline than any other game or piece of media. The first Fallout game took place in 2161, barely a century after the bombs dropped, while the newest game, Fallout 4, jumps a century further, set in 2287. That means that the Fallout show has to take into account all the various conflicts, factions, and events of the past in order to properly fit within the existing story.
There are three major characters that we follow throughout the first season, including Lucy MacClean, a young vault dweller living in Vault 33, located in California. Naive but skilled in the ways of survival thanks to years of training, Lucy’s life is overturned when her Vault is attacked by a group of raiders, led by a woman named Lee Moldaver, and her father is kidnapped. Following the attack, the rest of Vault 33’s inhabitants are too fearful to send out a rescue party, leaving Lucy to brave the surface alone. As Lucy embarks on a journey that will change her life forever, her younger brother, Norm, searches for further answers.
We also spend a lot of time with a young man named Maximus, a low-ranking member of one of the most powerful factions in the Wasteland, The Brotherhood of Steel. Believing that pre-war technology is too dangerous for humanity to wield, the Brotherhood, with their crusade-like order of Knights and Scribes, searches the ruined world, seeking technological artifacts to preserve. Through dumb luck, Maximus is promoted to the rank of Squire, and under the command of Lord Knight Titus, he adventures into the Wasteland in search of a dangerous scientist from a faction called the Enclave. Secretive and slimy, the Enclave is a villainous faction that uses its scientific edge to try and influence the Wasteland, shaping the future to fit their prejudiced, genocidal ideals. The Enclave scientist in question, Siggi Wilzig, has fled the Enclave with his dog, CX404, and a highly advanced form of energy called cold fusion, which could power the entire Wasteland with clean, renewable energy.
Finally, there’s Cooper, the actor we met in the show’s intro, who has now been transformed into a creature known as a ghoul. Still human but horribly mutated, ghouls are seemingly immortal, but as the years go by, they grow insane and bloodthirsty, ultimately becoming feral in the process. As Cooper staves off his ghoulish nature, he endlessly searches for Janey and Barb, who have been missing for years. Like the Wasteland itself, Cooper is unforgiving, brutish, and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Through happenstance and the events of the show, Lucy eventually encounters Siggi, and after his untimely death, she absconds with his dismembered head and heads to deliver it to none other than Lee Moldaver. This quest puts her on the path of Cooper, and the pair explores the Wasteland for a while, but she eventually meets up with Maximus, who has let Knight Titus die, leaving him in possession of a powerful set of T-60 power armor. During their quest, they encounter the destroyed city of Shady Sands, an important location in both the original Fallout game and several sequels. Once the home of the New California Republic, a wholesome, democratic faction that simply dreamed of a better future, Shady Sands was nuked into oblivion by none other than Vault-Tec.
After weeks of surviving the hellish Wasteland, Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper all make their way to the Griffith Observatory. Here, it is revealed that Lee Moldaver is not a raider but the last leader of the New California Republic. Lucy learns that Moldaver kidnapped her father as an act of revenge, as he’s actually a Vault-Tec informant who was in cryo-sleep for hundreds of years and the person responsible for the destruction of Shady Sands. After Lucy’s mother learned of life outside of Vault 33, she fled to Shady Sands with Lucy, but her father tracked them down, and after forcibly taking Lucy back, he destroyed the town out of spite. Although the Brotherhood of Steel attacks the Observatory and decimates the remaining members of the NCR, Moldaver is able to boot up the local power grid using the Enclave’s cold fusion device, but she succumbs to her wounds before long. Freed from Moldaver’s imprisonment, but with his dark secret revealed, Hank MacClean flees from the Observatory and makes his way toward the town of New Vegas, pursued by both Cooper and Lucy. Meanwhile, Maximus, who was knocked out in the scuffle, awakens to find Moldaver’s body and is crowned as the victor in the battle against the NCR.
What’s Next for Fallout: Season 2
Thankfully, Fallout has been renewed for a second season, and judging by the end of Season 1, it seems like the majority of the story will be set in New Vegas. This is a location that was thoroughly represented in the 2010 game Fallout: New Vegas, but there’s still plenty of mystery left to uncover. The story of Fallout: New Vegas was set in 2281, leaving almost a two-decade gap between the events of the game and show. In the game, much time was spent hunting across the Mojave Desert and interacting with various factions vying for control of the Vegas strip, but so much time has passed since then that anything is possible.
At the very least, we know that the supposed death of the New California Republic will likely play a major role in the coming story, especially considering that they previously held substantial power in New Vegas. Lucy and Cooper’s quest for revenge will likely be the crux of the entire story, but the future of the Brotherhood, including Maximus’ rise to power, also leaves a lot of room for further conflict. At the very least, we’re sure Fallout: Season 2 will feature weird and wacky factions, bloody action, and plenty of dark humor, hopefully providing more of what made Season 1 so enjoyable. We can’t wait until Fallout: Season 2 releases on Amazon Prime Video, but in the meantime, we recommend you pick up Fallout: New Vegas, as there’s been no better time for a first or repeat playthrough.
